Picking Up and Christmas Prep

Well hello there!

Goodness, it's been a little while, hasn't it?!

I'm afraid I've spent the last two weeks laid up with flu and sadly, contagious illness and kitchens just aren't the best of friends. However, I'm on the mend now (my family are, I think, a tad less eager than I am to celebrate the return of my voice!) and to begin the process of building myself back up, I've been working on our Christmas cake!

Now, the great thing about baking a Christmas cake is that it's really quite simple, and very easy to tailor to your own tastes. You can use whatever fruit you prefer, you can soak it in your choice of booze. Indeed, you can choose to keep it virgin (!?) and omit the alcohol if you're feeling particularly virtuous, but where's the fun in that? Anyway, the process of soaking the fruit and then making the cake itself means you can split the work over a few days, or longer if need be. Then, once it's baked, you can wrap it snugly, store it away and routinely douse it in yet more booze for a truly indulgent Christmas treat that will discreetly get your Nan completely plastered.

Doesn't that sound like fun?!

Originally, I had intended to make a whole heap of delicious gluten free, dairy free Christmas cakes, and offer them up for sale along with gluten free iced Christmas biscuits. Unfortunately, I fear my flu may have put paid to that for this year, although time will tell. (Incidentally, if you are particularly keen, please email me or send me a message and I'll see what I can do). Still, no point crying over spilled snowballs, and there is always next year.

In the meantime, as I type, the incredibly delicious smell of Christmas cake is wafting out of the kitchen, where it will sit in the oven until around half-past midnight because I forgot that it takes almost five hours to cook until I'd already put it in the oven...*ahem*. But the smell is heavenly and is edging me dangerously close to feeling the festive spirit.

So deck the halls and jingle those bells and I'll be back with the end result of our cake in my next post!